The need to establish a new type of trading process, beyond the barter system, brought about the establishment of a medium of exchange (e.g., money). This evolved over the ages into modern day commerce with monetary exchanges, stock markets, retail outlets, swap meets, etc. However, many of the globally employed systems may not be as efficient, or as fair as possible, since they rely on third party interaction or are based around a set market style or process. The utopian vision of a marketplace would be where the utility of the marketplace allowed for an individual to achieve the most efficient and advantageous level of transaction negotiation, fairest market value, and protected and guaranteed clearing for a commodity or service.
Long ago, ancient people invented money by placing fixed values on certain items such as shells, beads, stones, and even salt, with ingots being the most common form of money. Ingots were clumps of precious metal in no particular shape or size with their worth depending on their mineral content and weight. Their value was high because these metals were hard to find and difficult to mine. The world monetary system has evolved from ingots and ancient coinage to wire transfers, debit and credit cards and from primitive barter to currency exchanges, stock markets and intertwined global markets.
The Internet and world wide web (WWW) provided the first true continuous world wide communications structure open to the individual. The Internet allows for new ways to address global commerce. There are several different methods in which commerce may be implemented as well as a vast variety of commodities and services that are in need of being traded. The concept of using the Internet as a marketplace or auction forum has been implemented in a number of forms. The current technology of using E-mail and a telephone for notification employed by existing firms in closed environments has a rather low entry threshold of complexity. This method can be duplicated quite easily and has limited or no room for evolution. However, digital technology lends itself quite readily to real-time high-volume transactions made by multiple participants using shared information. Businesses are moving to digital technologies and this leads to a need to invent new technologies and processes to fill the utility.
Accordingly, a number of commerce systems over the Internet have become well known in the art. Most of these systems operate on a post and match process; that is, the systems work by having a prospective buyer bid on an item, and if the bid matches the seller's specified selling price, the item is sold to the buyer. The bid and notification may not be processed in real time. Additionally, the seller does not have the ability to intervene once the exchange process has been initiated—once the offer for sale or exchange is made, the seller is isolated from the transaction until it is complete.
With the proliferation of Internet-based selling systems, there have been a number of residual problems, specifically, transactions involving the direct payment of money for products which may have a non-uniform value, i.e., where value is based upon subjective factors such as age or condition. The direct payment of money on the Internet has proven problematic, particularly where buyers and sellers must condition payment on the receipt and approval of such goods. There is a long felt need for improved systems for facilitating transactions on the Internet and particularly for streamlining a mechanism of exchange to facilitate, foster and encourage transactions while at the same time ensuring that inventory is desirable, available and in balance with trading power.
The present invention addresses this need in a novel way by awarding a fixed number of SwapCredits for each qualified item entered by a user and allowing the user to immediately use those credits to trade for other items on the system. And while the assignment of credits is no more unique than money itself, what distinguishes this system is that the user is instantaneously given credits for all qualified items listed which allows the system to work at “full velocity” through immediate trading. Users do not have to wait to send their items to other users in order to “earn” credits. The system is also designed to protect the users' trading power by maintaining a balance between inventory and credits so that neither is diluted.